No ATM, No Problem: SoCash

How many times have you been caught in a situation where you were queuing up to buy food and when it was you turn to order and make payment, there was not enough cash in your wallet to pay? Or you owed your friends money who helped to pay for your food first but there is no atm nearby. Quite frustrating isn't it? To get cash but the only way to get it is via the atm or banks which are not easily found. 


Fortunately, there is a startup that is looking to solve this pain point for many of us which is called "SoCash". It essentially allow consumers to withdraw money from shops instead of atm and banks using the bank's mobile app. Simply login to your bank's mobile app to find out what are the shops nearest to you that you can withdraw money from. Make a money transfer to the shop that you want to collect the cash from. Go down to the shop and straight away collect your cash. That's how simple it is without any hassle.

Check out their youtube video below.

I personally find this solution quite innovative as it is able to solve the problems faced by banks, consumers and shops. 

For banks, it is more cost-effective to adopt SoCash as there are huge cost involved in operating and maintaining an atm which comes from paying for technicians, security personnels, security cameras, printers and repairs. 

For consumers, they can head to the nearby shops to withdraw money when the atm is not convenient. They just need to use the bank's mobile app to find out which shops nearby are able to offer the service of cash withdrawal and head to the shop to withdraw cash.

For shops aka cashpoints, it helps to bring in traffic from users who are entering their shop to withdraw cash and these users may be converted into customers. Probably one of the reasons why in all the petrol kiosk in Singapore, there are atm machines as it helps to pull in crowd which might convert to paying customers. And these cashpoints get to earn another source of income which is from the transaction fees for proving the cash withdrawal service.   

Below is an article taken from The Straits Times on what SoCash is all about by the CEO, Mr Hari Sivan.

I have provided a process flow below which is my own interpretation of how it works. 

1. User goes to bank mobile app to select the nearest shop to withdraw cash and input amount to withdraw

2. The details are pulled via api from the banks to SoCash. 

3. SoCash pass the details of the amount and user who is withdrawing the cash to the Shop

4. User goes to Shop and collect cash. 

5. The money is deducted from the user's account.

6. Bank pays SoCash transaction fees and SoCash gives part of it to the Shop

7. On a weekly basis, a report for the Shop will be churned out and the money is transferred to the Shop's bank account.

Besides withdrawal, i do see other avenues which could be potential game-changer as well for SoCash. They can look into doing deposits whereby users can go to the shops to deposit money instead. It is a reverse of withdrawal but also allow shops to get footfall.

Another interesting and feasible idea is that it can serves as a money changer platform. Currently what most people do when they want to exchange money to other currency is that they have to withdraw large amount of cash from the atm and change it at the money changer. And this has not changed since money changer existed. What if we can reduce the need for having to withdraw money from the atm and head straight to the money changer to collect money. How this works is user can login to the bank app and select the money changer that they want to collect the money from and in what currency. SoCash will get the rates from the money changer via api which will reflect to the user the amount that they will get in the converted currency. If user is agreeable to the rates, they can click accept and go to the money changer within the next few days to collect it. It will be more awesome if there is a vending machine that you can pay using your phone and it dispenses out the money in the currency that you want. 

Can you think of any negative points for SoCash? Go ahead to comment about it and don't forget to subscribe via email or like our Facebook Page for the latest updates!